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Upskill or Uplift? Why your employee training programmes need both

If you’re in tune with trends in the UK labour market, you’re likely aware that the skills gap crisis is a serious and growing concern across most industries. Plug “skills gap crisis” into any search engine, and you will find report after report addressing this growing predicament.

And this issue isn’t only affecting productivity and employee happiness on the job—it’s impacting the ways companies recruit. With so many potential employees lacking the skills that employers are looking for, your company needs to rethink recruitment strategies. What skills and experiences are most valuable in your team?

As an employer, you can’t necessarily affect the preparation of the talent applying for your jobs. But the good news is, with some thoughtful workplace culture changes, investments in digital resources, employee upskilling, and attention to mental health, you can put an end to the skills gap crisis within your own team. These investments will certainly lead to your organisation reaping the many benefits of employees who are highly skilled, engaged, and mentally healthy.

Today’s Employers Face Many Challenges

And while the skills gap crisis is alarming, employers of all sizes face numerous other challenges as well. These may include high turnover, employee mental health concerns (ever-growing post-pandemic), reengaging and reskilling post-pandemic, staff engagement, and wide geographic disbursement of employees. If any of these sound like challenges your organisation faces, you’re not alone. With the workforce ever-growing in diversity in terms of skills, experiences, race, ethnicity, values, and expectations, you must look to innovative ways to train and retain your employees. With the proper training and development programs, you can close your team’s skills gaps and effectively set expectations and company culture. Your employees will appreciate such efforts, which help them do their jobs better and arm them with the skills necessary to excel in their current positions and prepare for future advancement. It's a win-win for everyone.

Digital Training is Smart Training

Some employers may balk at the time and costs associated with traditional professional development and skills training programs. If you have any boots-on-the-ground training programs currently in play within your organisation, you know the challenges. Limited budgets may be one hurdle to overcome, as some companies can’t pay staff solely to provide training to employees. And your team may be time-poor. It can be difficult to take time away from daily responsibilities to engage in hours of training that may or may not be effective.

Enter digital training platforms.

With so much of our world going digital, taking your training programs online is smart business. The benefits of implementing digital training are numerous. They include, but are not limited to:

  • Saving your company money
  • Reducing learning and instructional time
  • Increased employee retention
  • Deliverable on employee’s schedule, so varied time zones aren’t a problem
  • Scalable for any size organisation
  • Ensures consistency and standardisation across your enterprise
  • Exciting content and modes of delivery

When implementing a new training program or revamping your current one, going digital will be your best bet. The opportunities for employee engagement, overall effectiveness, and boosting your company's bottom line are optimised while providing rich learning experiences tailored to each employee’s needs.

The Holistic Learning Revolution

While many employers may see skills gaps as the most pressing issue, your employees’ mental health and wellness play an equally critical role in the success of your company. Today's savvy and successful companies recognise this and are embracing innovative ways to blend the two.

High-impact training programs that account for skills development and well-being are more critical than ever in talent retention, happiness, productivity. As proof-positive of the necessity of mental health support in the workplace, Deloitte reports that £1 invested in employee welfare delivers £8 in savings.

And the good news is you don’t have to purchase disparate programs to upskill your employees while tending to their mental health needs.

Cademi is the first Holistic Learning Platform (HLP) that takes both into account. Cademi considers each learner’s current skills and level of fulfillment with life to create a rich learning journey tailored to their needs. It’s also mobile-friendly, so your team can engage with learning whenever and wherever they have the time, which reinforces learning as a habit.

Thriving workplaces start with thriving team members. By reimagining your employees as holistic individuals with their own unique set of needs, you can create more meaningful learning and engagement experiences. When you honour and acknowledge their very human and basic needs, they tend to be more productive and serve as great ambassadors for your brand. The result is a myriad of wins for your organisation in terms of reputation, retention, workplace happiness, and overall profits.

If you want to find out more about Cademi and how our Holistic Learning Platform could be implemented to enable and empower your employees, here are 2 ways to get started:

  1. Book a free demo and take the platform for a test drive
  2. Start your free 14-day full access trial today

Cademi provides the platform, you see the results.